From the Editor: No
one with humane impulses enjoys thinking or talking about the Holocaust. We
take pride in the relative handful of individuals and groups who did what they
could to thwart Nazi cruelty or who risked their lives and reputations to help
people escape the genocide. But by and large nations and individuals simply
looked the other way or even consorted with the perpetrators to inflict suffering
on innocent people.

In recent years many
of us have visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in our free time
during the Washington Seminar. Perhaps we are mindful of the admonition: "Lest
we forget." We also remember George Santayana's warning that "Those
who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

But why should a consumer
organization of blind people in twenty-first-century America devote its time
and attention to the Holocaust? Dr. Harold Snider, a longtime Federation leader,
explains why in the following article. This is what he says:

I am prompted to write
this article as chairman of the National Federation of the Blind in Judaism,
an interest group that allows Jewish Federationists to come together to deal
with issues of common concern. Although World War II ended almost sixty years
ago, the death of more than six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps continues
to be an issue of concern to all Jews, blind or not. The hate and prejudice
that inspired the killing of more than six million of our people is very difficult
to comprehend, even more so because we as blind Jews cannot see the photographs
documenting the tragedy and can attempt to understand this catastrophe only
by reading Holocaust literature, visiting Holocaust museums, or talking to Holocaust
survivors themselves.

This
issue of the Monitor, with its articles about the Holocaust, permits
all of us, Jews and non-Jews, blind and sighted, Federationists and non-Federationists,
to get some small idea of what the Holocaust was really like from the perspective
of two blind Jewish survivors. The more scholarly article also illuminates the
nature and extent of the attack on blind people. It is important for all of
us to remember that Hitler and the Nazi killing machine did not want to eliminate
only the Jewish people. Blind people were also high on the list of the defective
who were to be eliminated. Therefore to be both blind and Jewish was particularly
unfortunate.

As
an eleven-year-old blind boy in the sixth grade in Jacksonville, Florida, I
came face to face with the effect of the Holocaust in my own family. My cousin,
Frances Hirschfeld, had survived the Auschwitz concentration camp along with
Julian, who later became her husband. Frances was visiting my great-aunt, and
I asked my mother if I could speak with her about her Holocaust experience.
I was doing a project on Germany in social studies.

In
September of 1939 Frances and Julian had been neighbors in Warsaw, Poland. They
were each married, and each family had two children. Frances was an accountant
by training, and Julian was a research chemist. These families suffered incredible
privation and discrimination under Nazi occupation. In April of 1943, after
having been displaced from their homes in Warsaw, Frances and Julian along with
their spouses and children were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp
on the same train.

When
they reached the camp, a selection process took place. Frances's husband and
two children and Julian's wife and two children were sent to the gas chamber.
Frances and Julian themselves were forced to work as slave laborers. Frances
was one of the inventory clerks who kept track of all of the items taken from
Jews on the way to the gas chamber. Julian worked as a chemist in a munitions
factory at Birkenau, a satellite work camp.

After
liberation in 1945, Frances and Julian made their way to Paris, where they eventually
married. Frances wrote to my great uncle, who assisted them to immigrate to
the United States, where they began a new family. Julian was employed as a research
chemist and invented many new artificial fibers.

Although
I have only briefly recounted their story here, the effects of my interview
with my cousin Frances will be with me as long as I live. The Holocaust is personally
comprehensible to me as a blind person only because of the love and patience
of my cousin in telling me her story. As a trained historian I think that it
is important for all of us to understand the lessons which this Holocaust or
any genocide must teach us. Like it or not, we as blind people are among the
most vulnerable in any such situation. The firsthand accounts of Max Edelman
and Hans Cohn as Holocaust survivors should make Monitor readers pause
to reflect.